12.8 Flavoured cigarettes
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A large proportion of Australian cigarette brands have flavour additives according to the manufacturers' ingredients disclosures. In most brands these flavour additives have background effects. That is, these additives will produce only minor differences in taste, with tobacco flavours remaining prominent. However there are two kinds of cigarette where flavour additives are used at levels where they produce major differences in taste and may even dominate the tobacco flavour—menthol cigarettes and confectionery/liqueur cigarettes.
Australian menthol brands differ from Virginia cigarettes principally by being infused with between 16mg and 40mg of menthol during packaging.8 Menthol is highly volatile extract from peppermint. When menthol cigarettes are smoked, the menthol in the tobacco and filter is vaporised and carried with the smokestream, where it blocks irritation receptors and stimulates cold receptors in the mouth and throat, creating sensations of freshness, as well as relative smoothness.20 As the menthol taste is relatively persistent, it also blocks the lingering stale after-taste of tobacco, which many smokers find unpleasant.
Menthol cigarettes have been around since the 1930s, when they were promoted as useful for being able to continue smoking when one had a cough or cold. More recently, menthol cigarettes have been promoted strongly as a 'feminine' cigarette. Alpine, manufactured by Philip Morris, was strongly marketed to younger women in particular, prior to the current regime of advertising bans.
Liqueur/confectionery flavoured cigarettes represent a new development in comparison with menthol cigarettes, having only appeared on the Australian market around 2004–5. Some of these brands are produced in the same manner as menthol cigarettes. Others have a flavour pellet embedded in the filter.21 As smoke is drawn through the filter, the casing of the pellet dissolves and the flavour essences are vaporised into the smokestream.
Menthol and liqueur/confectionery flavour additives may facilitate initiation and deter quitting among some smokers by masking the harshness of tobacco smoke to an even greater degree than in 'regular' cigarettes.21 Masking the harshness of smoke may also lead to smokers gaining increased intakes of nicotine and other harmful smoke constituents if it leads to taking larger volumes of smoke and increased smoke retention.22
It is likely that masking harshness makes smoking more tolerable during the initiation phase, when many experimenting smokers struggle to overcome their natural aversion to smoking. Secondly, masking harshness makes it easier to smokers to avoid reflecting on the harmfulness of smoking. The harsher cigarette smoke is, the more likely a smoker is to further reflect on what she/he already knows at some level—that smoking is dangerous. Accordingly, masking the harshness of tobacco smoke deprives smokers of sensations that would otherwise encourage them to make a quit attempt.
At the Australian Health Ministers' Conference on 18 April 2008, the State, Territory and Commonwealth Health Ministers agreed to ban fruit and confectionery flavoured cigarettes, although there were no proposals to also ban menthol cigarettes or to restrict use of flavour additives more generally.
The sale of fruit and confectionary flavoured cigarettes is now prohibited in South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania. In Western Australia packages cannot be displayed by retailers if they contain (or have words, pictures or images that suggest they contain) fruit or confectionary flavoured cigarettes. The Victorian Government has announced its intention provide the Minister with the power to ban youth-orientated tobacco products and packages (including fruit and confectionery flavoured cigarettes) from 1 January 2010.
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